*
THERE was a soft tap on the bedroom door. Kinky was early. Ali's heart quivered. Smoothing his hair, dabbing some Boss behind his ears, breathing on his hand, Ali wished he had dressed in smarter clothes. Never mind. He still looked good in his new blue jeans and orange T-shirt. Leaning as casually as he could against the wall, he opened the door with a welcoming smile.
Hisham, Uthman and Moustapha Al-Sekem stood in the corridor next to the faun. Hisham was draped in a very loose pale blue robe. He looked terrible. His face was badly bruised, his blackened lips swollen like charred sausages, his eyes reduced to slits in puffy, purple flesh and his crushed, obliterated nose a gross purple distortion the size of an orange. His legs and feet were swathed in white surgical dressings.
''What the hell is he doing here?'' he growled, the smile erased from his face.
''I expect he's tired,'' said Al-Sekem. ''Sit down, Ali.''
Hisham limped heavily to the bed and carefully sat down. His eyes never left Ali's face.
''I am sorry we hurt you.'' Al-Sekem sounded utterly insincere. ''The festival is close and there is much to do. I have no time to investigate your stories properly so you will stay here, as my guests, until the festival is over. Then we shall talk again and decide what to do with you.''
''Kill us,'' muttered Ali, glaring at Hisham, ''Like he did the driver.'' He threw himself defiantly into the chair. Somewhere over his head Colette, Linguini and Remy were cooking ratatouille for a restaurant critic. ''Tell me, Doctor Al-Sekem, why Youssef Abdullah's head is in your fridge.''
''Dead men can't tell tales,'' Al-Sekem smiled icily. ''It's as good a storage place as any.''
''What did you do with the body?''
''My fish feasted well,'' Al-Sekem replied.
''Well,'' said Ali, repressing a shudder, ''What about Ali here? He's a spy. He knows who we are. He may already have told his people. You cannot take the chance. Kill him now.''
''My,'' said Al-Sekem, ''You're a bloodthirsty little beggar.'' He seemed in an immensely good humour. ''I thought, since you are old friends, you might become room-mates tonight.''
Ali choked indignantly.
Al-Sekem did not have time to waste on this. Hisham or Ali or whatever he was really called would extract the truth from the other boy by buddying up during the night. Or not. It no longer mattered. They would both be dead within twenty-four hours anyway. The deadline was approaching and nothing could be allowed to prevent him from fulfilling his mission, especially two street-boys. He also had that singing voice programmed into the computer. He did not need either of them now.
''You will have to postpone your night of passion with Ms Kinkhladze, I'm afraid,'' he answered dryly. ''Play nicely, Hisham, or you will disappoint me, and you do not want to disappoint me, do you? Not when the piranha have recently tasted human flesh…''
Uthman grinned his hideous, lop-sided grin and shut the door.
Knowing the room to be bugged, Ali slammed up the volume on the DVD player so the cooking rat was yelling then he went to the bathroom and turned the shower on full.
''Did you enjoy your time with Uthman?''
Hisham's lips were so swollen he could barely speak. When he did, the words came out in a breathless croak.
''Do you know what they did to me, you lousy fuck? They broke my nose, ripped out my toenails, steamed the skin off my bollocks, burned every inch of me and fucked me with a broomstick. Thanks a bunch, you lousy, stinking, fucking bastard.''
Ali grunted unsympathetically. ''Sorry if they hurt you,'' he said insincerely, ''But you electrocuted me, tortured me and tried to blow me up, remember?''
Revenge, said Hamza's voice in his head.
Self-preservation, Ali mentally countered.
''I had to,'' said Hisham. ''Talal and Moussa… they made me. And you said you're a spy.
''Yeah, right,'' Ali laughed. ''As though people use kids for this kind of thing. I made it up to scare them and impress you.''
''But you're pretending to be me,'' whispered Hisham angrily. ''You stole my identity. Who am I supposed to be? You? They'll kill me.''
''They're gonna kill you anyway,'' said Ali. ''Me too, I expect. They're total psychos.'' He told Hisham about Youssef Abdullah's head in the fridge and the piranha tank. ''Trust me,'' he finished, ''And I'll get you out alive.''
Hisham looked doubtful. ''So who am I?''
''Dunno,'' Ali shrugged. ''You can be Anas if you like.''
''And what if he shows up?'' snapped Hisham. ''Who will he be? Firas?''
''They're in jail,'' said Ali. ''I saw them arrested. Say Ali got killed in the cross-fire.''
Hisham shook his head. ''I don't know whether to believe you or not,'' he said finally.
''That doesn't matter,'' Ali said flatly. ''I'm your only chance of staying alive.''
Hisham winced as the painkillers started wearing off but he seemed convinced. Ali felt a little happier as he turned off the shower and lowered the volume on the TV. It was good to have another ally in the villa.
Hisham moaned again and lay back on the king-sized bed. Ali went for some painkillers.
Rooting through the kitchen cupboards, he realised the Festival was almost here, the endgame was approaching and he still had no clear idea what Al-Sekem was planning, except that he, Ali, had to sing 'Yesterday' whilst the speakers were powered by wind-turbines, and that, by the end of the day, he and Hisham would probably be fish-food.
It had to be a bomb.
Shifting packets of rice and macaroni aside, Ali found a plastic tub of paracetamols tucked behind some orange jam. He pocketed a fistful, decided to get some milk from the fridge. The head had gone. He had not realised he was holding his breath until he exhaled. Perhaps it had been mailed. Perhaps it had fed the piranhas. He took a bag of ice-cubes from the freezer for Hisham's face and returned to the room.
It was a long night. Moaning and muttering, Hisham drifted in and out of sleep whilst Ali, in pyjama shorts, paced the carpet, frothing with indecision, wondering why Kinky had not come. Presumably Al-Sekem had warned her away. Maybe he had caught and stopped her. Perhaps she had abandoned the villa altogether.
Hisham groaned again. Trying not to puke at the red, raw patches where the skin had peeled away from the legs, Ali stripped away Hisham's loose robe, daubed antiseptic ointment on the burns, changed the dressings on his legs and feet and re-strapped the dislocated shoulder. Hisham thrashed about deliriously and uttered a sequence of heart-splitting wails.
Ali still did not know what Al-Sekem was planning but he knew he had to be stopped. The damage done to Hisham could easily be done to him too. What if Uthman came for him with his steam-hose and broom-stick?
He had one weapon of his own. He had brought it with him in his rucksack. All he could do was plant it and wait. Hash Five would blow the whole damned place to bits. He squirmed into his jeans, a T-shirt and trainers and padded through the living room towards the terrace. The cool marble sculptures stood sentinel over the circular glass-covered pool. Inside, the flat silver-grey fish hung motionless in the murky water. Hating and fearing in equal measure the fierce, jagged teeth and expressions of low cunning and malicious intent, Ali dragged the thick white rug across the marble floor and over the glass. He did not know how they might cope without light. Perhaps they would turn on each other in a cannibalistic frenzy when the hunger became too much. Perhaps they would just expire in the darkness. Either way, no-one would be coming back to feed them after tomorrow.
Outside, in the cool night air Ali lit a Gitane he had found in the kitchen. As usual, it made him momentarily, light-headedly dizzy as the nicotine fingers dug deeply down into his lungs. The Ajloun valley was still and silent but for the incessant, high-pitched whirring of cicadas and crickets. The distant lights of isolated farmhouses blinked in the darkness. The swimming pool lay smooth and glassy-black. The tennis net drooped, dew seeping into its ropes. Above him, the indigo sky stretched away to infinity, its surface pricked with bri
ght white stars. The red tip of his cigarette glowed angrily. The rucksack was heavy with the weight of the bomb-vest he had carried from Damascus. Somehow it seemed appropriate to use this one, to reconnect those wires he had yanked out among the thyme and rosemary bushes in Leila's herb garden and to conceal this vest which should have scattered Ali's parts in bloody gobbets to the four corners of the Earth, behind the powerful, sucking, vacuum pump under the pool and know that Hash Five would end it all.
He took one final deep drag from the Gitane, tossed the rest into the pool where it fizzed angrily and died, then, hefting the bomb onto his shoulder, he went down the steps.
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